Good Vibrations Magazine

“So anyway,” my interview subject continued, “I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me earlier that I was attracted to fat partners — after all, the first person I can remember getting a really intensely sexual crush on was Santa Claus!”

I was doing research on fat and sexuality for my book Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those Who Love Them, and had been interviewing people for several weeks about size, sex, fat, and fantasies, but this was certainly the first time Santa Claus had entered the picture. After my interviewee and I got done chuckling, I asked more about the Santa thing. For that interviewee and for quite a few other people I talked to while working on the book, Santa turned out to be much, much more than just a holiday icon. He was a sex object, the central character in torrid fantasies that danced like hormone-plumped sugarplums in quite a few people’s heads.

At first I was a little surprised by this. Of all the childhood heroes to whom a child or adolescent could become attracted, Santa just never seemed all that likely to me. Superman, Wonderwoman, Spidey, even the Tooth Fairy… there are so many candidates. So why Santa? Well, for many of the people I talked to, Santa Claus is a personification of the attributes they idealized and hoped to find in a partner. And that makes sense. He’s generous, ample, giving, round, friendly, accepting, soft, and good-humored. Santa’s always got that sexy, aroused-looking flush to his face, he’s always in a good mood, and he always looks ready, willing, and able to slide down your chimney or offer you a taste of his candy cane. But that isn’t the whole of it. No, part of the attraction is that Santa is, was, and always will be a fat man, and those generous love handles, that belly that “wiggled and jiggled like a bowl full of jelly,” that sleek round fat-man bod, are things that sing a sweet and sexy song to an awful lot of people.

It’s still news to many of us that people are actually attracted to big partners, but it’s quite the truth. Plump, round, portly, potbellied, rotund, chubby, chunky, or just plain fat, there are people who love it, find it sexy and attractive, and who profoundly enjoy the sensual banquet of being with a bigger partner. (Hint for the confused: there’s more to touch and enjoy!) In a fat-phobic world, it can be difficult to believe that this is true, but it is. And it’s not just Santa Claus that people who like bigger partners — also known as FA’s (fat admirers) or chubby chasers — are looking at: it’s you and me and the rest of the 97 million or so Americans the National Institutes of Health estimate to be “overweight.”

Sure, we’re not all Santa Claus, and most of us don’t really want to be. I mean, really, the wardrobe’s pretty limited, and the North Pole just does not have much of a nightlife. But the fact that some people form helpless, hopeless, torrid fixations on Santa Claus tells us some important things: You don’t have to be thin, or young, to be sexy. Big people have a lot to give. Fat can be hot! Round bodies can make us hard as rocks or slippery as seals. Some fat people — like Santa — can do things that thin people can’t. Soft and thick can be every bit as sexy, powerful, and confident as lean and thin.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Santa, dare I say it, is a sex machine. Santa knows that bellies are touchable, round, delicious, tantalizing… and that when you wear that “bowlful of jelly” like you know it’s so sweet and tantalizing that everyone wants to take a taste, everyone will. You can see it in that twinkle in his eye. Santa is one man who knows that everybody — even grownups — secretly wants to sit on his lap.

Sure, I know Santa’s fictional. Sure, I realize that real life isn’t necessarily going to play out like a children’s story, and that you’re never guaranteed of finding what you hoped for under the tree. Still, Virginia, people do find fat people attractive, and I think the fact that people fall hopelessly in lust with Santa Claus is pretty good proof. Need more? Try reading Jenesi Ash’s funny, hot erotic short story “Santa’s Little Helper,” (in Best Women’s Erotica. It’s a Santa fantasy that’ll deck your halls and jingle your bells with tantalizing, taboo, well-upholstered delight.

No, you don’t need the red plush or the white beard to opt in on Santa’s secret. It doesn’t even have to be Christmastime. Just rev up that easy laugh, turn on the twinkling lights in your eyes, and get out there in the world, fat and sassy and knowing in your bones that someone out there is just aching to unwrap a great big sexy present that looks an awful lot like you. It sure works for Santa, and it just might make a much merrier Christmas for you, too.